Bristol dropped her head in her hands. She’d wakened this morning feeling safe and happy, secure and loved. Now...
Kitty watched her. “I’ll do all I can to make it as easy as possible,” she said kindly. Her bony shoulders rose in a shrug. “You’ll adjust. We all do what we have to.” Sighing, she stood and yawned. “Maybe you’ll be more cheerful in the morning.” Her voice indicated she didn’t believe this any more than Bristol did. Kitty waved toward a door at the back of the kitchen; then she scattered the logs in the hearth to save the bits of wood. The flames flickered out, and instantly both women felt cold.
Bristol would have to stay the night; there was nothing else to do. Reluctantly she followed Kitty into a tiny chill room containing two straw pallets, a slop basin, and four wooden pegs holding a change of clothing. Kitty waved a stub of candle toward one of the pallets. “That’s Cutter’s, but he don’t use it. He’ll pass out over the table or curl up on the floor beside the stove. You can use it.” She snuffed the candle, and Bristol heard her lie on the straw.
Kitty spoke from an icy darkness. “One more thing. They’s a wooden bat beside the pallet. It’s for the rats. Filthy things!”
Slowly Bristol approached Cutter’s pallet, her ears straining for the noise of scrabbling claws. She lowered herself to the straw and found a thin blanket, which she pressed around her body. The straw stank, and in five minutes she was covered with bites, scratching and hearing minute rustlings within the pallet.
Blinking rapidly, her throat burning, Bristol feared she’d finally lost the battle not to cry. “Tears won’t help!” she whispered between clenched teeth. Biting back ready tears, she stared into the cold darkness with moist eyes. She wasn’t frozen in the snow; she wasn’t dead. A roof lay over her head, and there was food in her belly.
There had to be a way out of this; there had to be! And she’d find it. She’d bide her time and find the way. The important thing was not to panic, not to make foolish mistakes. Plus, she reminded herself, they’d be searching for her. Jean Pierre, and Aunt Pru, and Uncle Robert—they wouldn’t rest until they found her.
But they wouldn’t know where to begin. Where to look. And they might easily assume she’d died in the storm. Bristol tossed on the rustling straw. If she allowed such thoughts, she was defeated. She’d block the negatives; she’d key on the hope that they were searching for her.
A loud slam sounded from Kitty’s side of the small room, and Bristol sat up, her heart leaping into her mouth.
“Damn!” Kitty hissed. “I thought I killed it!” Bristol heard the wooden bat drop to the floor.
Frantically Bristol spun and dug her fingers between the straw and the wall until her hand closed around a wooden bat. She hefted it reassuringly, suddenly glad to have it. Dear God, how could she hope to sleep! So many worries whirled in her brain. And rats! The tension of listening, waiting, made her head ache.
“That’s mine! Touch it again and I’ll knock yer beastly little head off!”
Bristol’s eyes snapped open; she peered through the darkness. “Kitty?” she asked uncertainly.
“No, it weren’t me. That’s Mrs. Pudden.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Pudden,” Kitty whispered. “Behind the wall. On the other side.”
Mrs. Pudden’s voice screamed, as clear as if she stood in the room with Kitty and Bristol, “I warned ye!” Then came the crack of a heavy blow and a child’s shriek. Other shouts lifted, and a baby’s thin wail rose and fell.
Kitty clicked her tongue. “Poor thing. She’s got it bad, Mrs. Pudden does. Her and eleven brats in two rooms.” A note of pride lightened Kitty’s whisper. “Leastways me and Cutter got three rooms and just the two of us.”
Bristol was appalled to think eleven children and their mother lived in two rooms as tiny as this. She listened to the ongoing battle behind the wall and tried to imagine the fracas. “How do they live? Is there a Mr. Pudden?”
Kitty chuckled. “Maybe once. Who knows? The men come and they go. They bring Mrs. Pudden a few shillings, but they bring the brats, too. The oldest is thirteen.”
Bristol tried to imagine it. “How does she possibly take care of them all?” Behind the wall Mrs. Pudden screamed and something flew at the wall.
“Them above nine works the streets. Rosie, she’s the eight-year-old, Rosie watches over the rest when Mrs. Pudden goes to the streets herself. Which ain’t as often as she’d like. Most times, Mrs. Pudden catches a baby, then she and Rosie takes in washing and sewing. They make do, like us all.”
An image of New England children rose in Bristol’s mind, pink cheeks, well-fed, well-clothed. Not like she pictured the children beyond the wall. New England children attended dame schools and learned a trade. None she’d heard of lived twelve people to two rooms. “What do these children do on the streets?”
Kitty’s voice was surprised. “Why, they beg or steal, of course. Sometimes the twelve-year-old brings home men, when she’s lucky. But Charlene’s as plain as the bottom of a slop basin; the pickings ain’t good for her, poor child.”
“Little children...” Begging, stealing, whoring. Bristol shook her head. Worlds within worlds. She hadn’t realized this world existed side by side with the opulence of Hathaway House. She hadn’t thought of it.
Kitty seemed to sense what Bristol was thinking. “It ain’t so bad as you might think. Mrs. Pudden’s done what she can to give the kids a chance in life. She blinded the oldest. Shrewd she is, that Mrs. Pudden, she only blinded one eye so’s the family don’t feel no burden having to lead him around.” Bristol gasped and covered her mouth. Her stomach rolled.
Kitty continued. “She took the arm of one and the foot of another. Now she has a board strapped to the baby’s head. Heard some newfangled idea you can deform a head while it’s still soft.” Kitty chuckled. “You ever hear of such a thing? Seems to me the old way is best—hit ‘em hard. But they’s still time if the board don’t work.”
Bristol bit down on her thumb. She had to escape this place! A terrible thought stunned her mind. The Puddens, Kitty, all the others that lived in these cold, crowded tenements—they would never escape. She thought about that. “Kitty?” Bristol whispered, glad the other side of the wall had quieted. “Kitty, come with me. I know my aunt will find a place for you. Come with me.”
Kitty didn’t answer for so long, Bristol wondered if she slept. Then Kitty whispered into the darkness, “I can’t go nowhere. I couldn’t leave Cutter.”
Bristol had forgotten the drunken man in the front room. “He’s your husband, then?” The idea was repulsive. And she didn’t think Aunt Pru would find a place for the likes of Cutter Rumm.
Kitty laughed softly. “Husband! Cutter Rumm bought me off me mum when I was ten. Good thing, too. Mum seen I weren’t going to be handsome enough to work the streets, and she give me two days to get out of her rooms.” Bristol felt rather than saw Kitty’s shrug. “Mum got a few shillings, and I got a roof and a full belly for the last fifteen years.” Bristol blinked and lifted on an elbow, peering through the cold gloom. It was impossible for Kitty to be only twenty-five; she looked older than Hannah.
A little defensively Kitty added, “Cutter weren’t always a drunken wreck. Ten years ago, when he were still in the mines, before the dust got him, before his lungs give out, well, Cutter Rumm walked with the best of ‘em. That he did!” Her thin chest rose in a wistful sigh. “That he did.”
Easing back on her pallet, Bristol stared into the blackness. ‘She scratched her neck and arms, and felt stirrings in her hair. Kitty’s life seemed so hopeless, without a hint of promise or hope for the future. But Kitty’s voice didn’t beg pity; Kitty didn’t find anything extraordinary in the lives she’d recounted. And that was more shocking to Bristol than any outrage would have been. A deadened acceptance of the unthinkable. Bristol shivered.
“Queenie?” Kitty murmured after a long silence.
“‘Bristol,’ please.”
“I... I’m glad y
ou’re here... Bristol. It’s real nice having a woman to talk to.” The words were shy and hesitant.
Bristol could think of no answer. She didn’t want to be here. Not as a companion to poor Kitty, and not as a...
The flicker of a candle appeared suddenly at the door of the room. Bristol rose on her elbows and sucked in her breath. Her green eyes widened in fright.
Cutter Rumm swayed in the doorway, the candle under his chin lighting an evil leer.
21
“If you damage her, Cutter, you’ll never get the ransom! You’ll never see a penny if she’s raped.” Kitty’s voice shot through the darkness, calm and steady.
Above the candle, Cutter’s red eyes flicked toward Kitty, then back to Bristol. Bristol held her breath, not daring to move.
“There ain’t no hurry, Cutter. She ain’t going nowhere. She’ll still be here when you’ve had a chance to make up your mind.”
“Shut up,” he roared. “Shut up! I can’t think with yer voice yammering in me face.” His eyes swung from Bristol and glared at the pale thin shape on Kitty’s pallet. Lurching, he stumbled toward Kitty and fell heavily beside the straw.
“Ye know what I be wanting. Hike up yer skirt and open yer legs!”
Without a word Kitty lifted on the rank straw, and Bristol saw a flash of thin bony legs. Cutter grunted, and his fingers scrabbled at the opening of his breeches. Across the narrow space separating the pallets, Kitty’s expressionless dark eyes met Bristol’s. Then her hand reached, and she pinched out the candle, plunging the small room into darkness.
Weak with relief at her escape, Bristol lay back on her pallet. A few feet away, she heard the thumpings and panting grunts of a joyless coupling. Kitty made no sound.
Bristol turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, wishing she could shut out the sounds. Kitty had saved her this time, but could she continue to do so? Long after Bristol heard Cutter’s wet snore, she lay tensed against the wall, her fingers curled on the wooden bat.
By morning the snow had thinned and stopped, leaving London smothered in a shroud of deep white. Before dawn, coal carts plunged through the drifts, delivering welcome heat to the mansions in London’s fashionable areas. Soon other wagons and drays and carts and coaches appeared in the lanes. London began to dig out, to resume the business of life halted by the storm.
In Almsbury Lane, the Pudden children followed the coal carts, catching lumps that fell from the rattling black mounds, thrusting thin arms into the snowy street, searching for bits and chunks that dropped. Few coal carts paused long in Almsbury Lane; business was poor here, the coins scarce.
What this section of town couldn’t steal, they bought by the piece from the coal hags, blackened old women with exhausted cold faces who hung yokes on their shoulders and sold what they could from the buckets swinging at the ends of the yoke. It was a rare customer who purchased more than a handful of lumps.
Bristol watched a coal hag’s seamed face lift in gratitude when Kitty bought half a pail of the damp coal. Kitty counted halfpennies into the woman’s pocket and shut the door.
Leaning over his morning ale, Cutter sat at the table running a scarred thumb across the blade of a knife. “I’ll find that money, slut.” He coughed and spit toward the stove, missing by a wide margin.
“Aye,” Kitty answered placidly. “That you will.”
“It be mine.”
“Aye, that it is.”
He glared at her and stabbed the knife point into the table. “I could beat it out of ye,” he growled.
“Aye, that you could.” Gingerly Kitty pried the stove open with a stick of wood and threw a handful of coal on the embers.
Listening, Bristol decided the conversation had a deadened familiarity to it, as if each spoke a role they’d played until it no longer held meaning.
She stared out the window, watching the Pudden children race up to the coal hag and grab at the lumps in her buckets. Her green eyes peered up the lane, watching it come to life. Now the storm was over, Jean Pierre would come looking for her. How long, dear God? How long before he found her? Would he find her?
After a night of worried thinking, she cherished no illusions about her situation. She couldn’t depend on Cutter Rumm to take her back; she saw that. And to attempt it on her own was impossible. She had no money to pay a hired cab, and her slippers were ruined. She couldn’t walk barefoot in the snow, and the clogs Kitty lent her weren’t designed for lengthy walking. Plus, she had no idea which direction to go. And no knowledge of how to cope on the streets, a different world from any she’d known.
Cutter snarled, as if sensing her thoughts. “Into the kitchen with ye; ye can help Kitty ready things for the regulars. They’ll be coming now the snow’s stopped. Ye might as well be useful whiles I’m deciding about ye.”
Kitty smiled and shook her head. “Cutter, look at them hands. She ain’t done no work.” Her smile vanished at sight of his face. “I reckon she can learn.” Dodging Cutter’s slap, Kitty scurried toward the kitchen with a quick wave for Bristol to follow.
Bristol edged past Cutter and hastened into the kitchen. “I grew up on a farm, Kitty, I can work,” she whispered. In fact, she thought it might take her mind off the panic threatening to strangle her. It would be good to lose herself in something besides the icy fear clamping her chest.
Kitty looked at the fine wool gown and Bristol’s smooth hands. She shrugged apologetically. “You don’t look like you ever used them hands for more than waving a fan.”
Together they cleared the skimpy remains of a sparse breakfast, and Kitty whispered answers to Bristol’s questions.
“I hide the coins... if I didn’t, Cutter would give everything to drink, and then how could we eat or keep warm?”
“Where do the coins come from?”
“This here is a pub.” Kitty chuckled at the look on Bristol’s face. “You was unconscious when Cutter carried you in. I guess you didn’t be seeing the sign. This is the Royal Rumm.”
Kitty seemed to expect a comment, and Bristol searched for something to say. “It... that’s a nice name,” she offered lamely.
Pleased, Kitty nodded. “I thought of it,” she admitted with a note of pride. “It brings us a bit of money, and sometimes, when one of the regulars has a bit extra”—she shrugged—“I can take him in back and earn a tot more.” She spoke mater-of-factly, perhaps a bit wistfully, as if she wished more of the regulars had money to spend on a woman. But it was the money that was of interest, not the regulars.
When the kitchen was in order, though not what Bristol thought of as order, they filled available containers with snow and set the pots before the hearth to melt. As it melted, they poured the water into a crock and gathered more. “I’m hoping to collect enough for cooking and enough left over for a wash,” Kitty said timidly. She fought with herself. “You can have first wash if you want, and I’ll take second.”
“Thank you,” Bristol said. It didn’t look to her as if Kitty had taken time for a wash in a long while—she didn’t think she’d want to go second. Being poor was a circumstance a person couldn’t help, but being clean... “Isn’t there a well nearby?” She couldn’t help a note of disapproval in her voice.
A faint pink flush appeared on Kitty’s cheeks. “They’s a well, but it’s more than a mile distant. A long ways to carry buckets.” Now it was Bristol’s turn to blush. She’d made too hasty a judgment; this was not a world she knew. “The Thames is a nearer walk,” Kitty said, looking at her hands. “But a person would be a fool to wash there. Come out worse than you went in.”
Bristol remembered the putrid brown scum coating the Thames. “Kitty, I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. She stirred the stew pot, embarrassed to look at Kitty. Her stomach clutched at a closer examination of the pot’s contents.
Kitty touched her shoulder. “We do the best we can.”
Next they cleared the shattered gin bottles behind the front counter, wiped off the table and benches, and made a desult
ory sweep of the muddy floors. The phlegm-crusted stove they left alone. Soon the first of the regulars trudged through knee-deep snow to appear at the door. Others followed, until seven men hunched over the table, smoking, shouting, and buying ale or gin.
Bristol heard the drunken voices, but she didn’t see the speakers. During the night, Cutter had decided Bristol was to remain hidden until he’d made his decision regarding her future; would he sell her favors or take a chance on a generous ransom? Until he made his choice, Bristol was to work in the kitchen while Kitty tended the men. Though he wanted no one to know of her presence, still Cutter couldn’t resist positing a hypothetical problem to his regulars, and Bristol listened as she worked, hearing them argue what each would do if he stumbled across a finely dressed lady tossed out in a snowstorm.
Rumm and two others weren’t certain, but the consensus seemed to be that returning such a treasure would be folly. Far better to keep the girl and earn as much as possible until her youth and beauty faded—a rapid consequence of such a life.
Bristol’s heart sank, and she bent over the tub of oily water with a pang of fright. She ran a rag over the trenchers and stacked them to one side, wishing the kitchen had a window. With all her soul she wanted to look outside and see Jean Pierre. She needed a miracle.
At the moment, all she had was a filthy kitchen. Bristol didn’t fault Kitty; she saw the demands of the men left Kitty no time for women’s work. But Bristol had time. Time she needed to fill until Jean Pierre found her.
Drawing a determined breath, Bristol cast a hard eye around the room. She squared her shoulders and rolled her hair into a bun at her neck. There was a soiled apron forgotten on a back peg, and she tied it around her waist. She decided to begin with the floor, and took Kitty’s hoarded water without a twinge of remorse. If she had to live here awhile, she refused to live in filth. Hannah Adams had not brought up her daughters to tolerate filth. If Bristol had to live here... She wrenched her mind from that thought and dropped to her knees and attacked years of accumulated dirt with a fury that would have gladdened even Bridey Winkle.
Salem's Daughter Page 37
